


With Cake and Flowers

by Bentclaw



Category: Free!
Genre: M/M, Rin is a hopeless case, Young Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-25
Updated: 2015-11-25
Packaged: 2018-05-03 07:30:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5282153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bentclaw/pseuds/Bentclaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for RinHaru Week 2015, Day 3. </p>
<p>Rin, with all his idealism and grand expectations for life, has been looking forward to meeting his true love. Despite all that, he's really not equipped to handle it when it happens. Set in their elementary school days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With Cake and Flowers

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be longer. And better. I had a next part planned out but couldn't quite work out how to attach it. If the ending seems oddly cut off, that's why.
> 
> I always warned everyone that one day I'd crack and start writing excessively sappy ship fluff, I didn't expect this to be the fandom for it. Tiny Rin and his incapacitating crush on Haru sustain my life force, though, so it had to happen.

Maybe it was childish of him, but Rin had always believed in love at first sight. When Gou was little, he used to sneak out of his room to listen in while their mother told her bedtime stories about starstruck young men and women overcoming insurmountable odds to be with their beloved. Those kinds of tales had always been more interesting to him than the ones his parents had told him when he was a baby. There was nothing especially _bad_ about heroic quests and brave warriors defeating evil, but they all lacked a certain level of emotional appeal. It had been a sad day for him when Gou had decided she was too old for bedtime stories.

If Gou was too old for those stories, then he _definitely_ was. Which meant that maybe it had been a mistake to mention one day on the walk home from school that he was looking forward to meeting the person he was going to marry so he could just know who he was supposed to end up with and be done with schoolyard drama.

Sousuke had snorted with laughter and told him that there was no way anyone could just _know_ that right away and did he honestly believe in that love-at-first-sight nonsense?

“Well, yes!” Rin answered indignantly. “Why shouldn’t I?”

“Really, Rin?” Sousuke was grinning in a way he didn’t like, a way that suggested he was in on some big joke at Rin’s expense. “I knew you were kind of a sap, but I didn’t think it was this bad. You know fairy tales aren’t real, right?”

“I’m telling you, it happens!” Rin insisted, red in the face with embarrassment at the way Sousuke was snickering at him. “You can’t prove it doesn’t. Stop making fun of me!”

“You can’t prove it does,” was Sousuke’s comeback. “Talk to me when it happens to you, and then maybe I’ll stop.”

Rin crossed his arms. “Fine, I will!” He turned off onto the road for his house without so much as a see-you-tomorrow or a wave goodbye.

  _“Talk to me when it happens to you.”_ He repeated under his breath, in an angry mockery of Sousuke’s know-it-all tone. That wouldn’t be a problem, because Rin was firmly convinced that his One True Love, the only one for him, was out there somewhere. It was just a matter of getting out and living his life so he could have the highest possible chance of meeting them. Then he could get married in a beautiful ceremony with cake and flowers, and shove it in Sousuke’s face at the wedding before going on to live a blissfully happy life. So there.

He spent the rest of his walk home planning it all out in his head. Most people fell in love when they were older, right? So he’d probably meet his love sometime after high school. He would probably be really cool when he was a grown-up, so he was sure he’d fall in love with someone equally cool. He broke into a smile just thinking about it, and his angry stomping evolved into an excited march. What was the point in sulking around? He had a great future waiting for him, he should be hurrying to get to it as fast as he could.

* * *

 

He wasn’t expecting to meet his One True Love, the only one for him, while he was still in elementary school. He also wasn’t expecting to fall for a guy, although that was a secondary surprise. The biggest surprise was where they met. There was just nothing romantic about a swim meet.

Still, when destiny handed you your cards, it was bad form to complain about your hand. Rin wouldn’t have tried to protest it even if he’d had the mental capacity to do so after having every one of his neurons short out at the same time. It had happened in a flash, right after he pulled himself out of the pool and took his first good look at the swimmer who had managed to beat him.

His skin was buzzing. He had felt it starting while he was still in the water, when he had felt himself being overtaken. It was stronger now. His breath was loud in his ears and he was only faintly aware of anything aside from his true love’s retreating back as he moved away from the pool with his friends. The feelings were entirely unfamiliar, but so overwhelming that he figured he had to be either falling in love or dying.

Hopefully the adults supervising the swim meet took his collapse for simple exhaustion, and hopefully nobody noticed him faintly checking his own pulse to make sure he wasn’t about to die. His heart was still beating at a steady pace, and he was pretty sure he was still breathing, so that only left one option.

His first thought was _I have to find Sousuke, I need to tell him “I told you so.”_

His second thought was _I take it back, Sousuke can never know about this._ He had always imagined that he would meet his true love at some suitably romantic time, that he would know exactly what to say, and that everything would just fall into place. Instead he was reduced to a helpless pile of confusion and swirling emotions, sprawled out on the pool deck.

It wasn’t cool. It wasn’t dignified. He definitely hadn’t made a good impression.

“Matsuoka, are you okay?” His teammates were starting to look at him oddly. He somehow managed to regain control of his limbs long enough to sit up. _Who was that? He was so fast._

He glanced around, but his true love had already left the side of the pool. He must have been dawdling for a long time, if his teammates felt like they needed to check on him. He drew in a shaky breath to answer them.

“Yeah, I’m cool! Just catching my breath!” The smile he sent them was too big, felt forced, and was maybe a little bit manic. He had the paranoid worry that if anyone got too close to him they would know exactly what he was feeling. Like the feelings were radiating off his skin.

The urge to keep his feelings hidden shocked him with its intensity. Part of him, the part that liked drawing flowers in art class and reading old poems, wanted him to announce to the world that he finally understood what it felt like to love someone. The rest of him was all but screaming _TELL NO ONE._ He felt paralyzed, torn between two conflicting courses of action.

He existed in this state of confusing limbo for some time, having managed to drag himself back to the pile of towels and folding chairs that served as the home base for him and his friends at the meet. His swim jacket was folded around him, warm and familiar and most importantly, big enough to hide his excited trembling. What should he do? How should he handle this?

_I should try to talk to him,_ he decided eventually. _I need to find out who he is._

**Author's Note:**

> I kept stopping while writing this and thinking "no, I have to change it, Rin wasn't this dramatic" but actually I think he was. Writing young Rin's perspective is a great way to embarrass yourself.


End file.
